Technology Fee

Student Technology Fees are used to support a significant level of information technology resources at SMSU. These resources include such items as the campus wired and wireless networks, computer labs, smart classrooms, student printing services software licenses. A Student Technology Fee Committee is formed each year to provide a recommendation to the Student Senate and University Administration regarding the use of Student Technology Fee revenue for the subsequent year.

Instructional Software Fund Program

Introduction

The Student Technology Fee Committee (STFC) has again approved funding for faculty to acquire software to support instructional purposes. An amount of $7,500 was provided for the 2017-2018 academic year. The STFC charges the Academic Technology Committee (ATC) to manage this program. The STFC established the following provisions for these funds. First, funds are to be limited to software that is accessible to students. Second, a report on utilization of funds shall be provided to the STFC by March 15, 2018.

Funding Eligibility

Software funded must be used for instructional purposes and be accessible to students. Examples include (not in any priority order):

Software to be installed in a campus lab for classroom instruction;

Software to be utilized by students for classroom assignments or research activities - likely to be accessible in a campus lab environment;

Software used by faculty for instructional activities,

installed on smart classroom(s) computer workstations,

installed on individual faculty workstations provided that the software will be used for an instructional, classroom-related purpose.

It is the ATC’s intention to notify applicants by December 11, 2017 regarding funding decisions.

Evaluation Criteria*

Funding decisions will be made by the ATC upon a review of applications in light of the criteria listed below**:

Strength of academic rationale for request

Number of students per academic year by software

Number of academic programs to benefit from software

Software costs

Non-availability of alternative software products

Annual recurring costs (e.g., software maintenance fees)

Existence of any matching funds

* The ATC reserves the right to allocate funding among departments/programs as it deems appropriate in order to ensure that a diverse group of departments/programs can benefit from these funds.

** The ATC reserves the right to partially meet applicant's funding requests. Applicants to be considered for partial funding will be contacted prior to the final funding decisions in order to determine their willingness to accept a reduced funding amount.